Innovative Perse students show off research at youth science conference

24 Oct 2017

Eesha Wahid

Aaditya Nagarajan

Vikram Singh

From left to right: Eesha Wahid, Vikram Singh, Aaditya Nagarajan

Eesha Wahid

Eesha Wahid

Eesha Wahid (Upper Sixth) was runner-up in a research competition held as part of the Young Scientists’ Journal Conference in Cambridge.

She came second with her poster presentation in the event at Queens’ College, which was aimed at allowing science enthusiasts aged 14 to 18 to meet, discuss and share ideas.

Eesha looked into how special kinds of immune cells, known as T cells, could be used in cancer therapy to target tumours after signing up for a Crest Gold Award, allowing her to develop her ideas in the lab at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research.

On carrying out the research, she said: “It was such an amazing experience and really rewarding. If there are other people in the position I was in last year, I’d definitely encourage them to see what’s available to them or whether they can get into the Crest Gold Award because it really does feel fantastic.”

Listen to Eesha explain more about her findings and what she gained from taking part in the YSJ Conference.

At the YSJ Conference, Eesha was joined by two more Perse pupils, Vikram Singh (Year 11) and Aaditya Nagarajan (Year 9), who displayed their in-depth findings in poster form.

Vikram studied the phenomenon of the digital currency bitcoin and whether it could replace traditional money in the future after being intrigued by how it worked.

He said: “It’s very complicated and I decided I should do a longer research project. I found some articles, books and papers about it, but because it’s such a new technology, I had to dig deep and figure out some of the information for myself by creating a couple of programs to test things I couldn’t understand.”

Vikram talks more about his research and his conclusions over the viability of crypto (digital) currencies below.